Ecological Public Toilets for India? Is it possible? (Non-flush-resource-recovery)

Re: Ecological Public Toilets for India? Is it possible?

first about the title of the thread. I am not solely interested in urine-separation toilets, but in general in toilets that don´t use water for flushing and focus on resource recovery. Especially in a context of public toilets in cities, I am not 100% sure on which scale a collection of pure urine is manageable and therefore I am looking for ideas on how to handle this issue. So to be more precise the title should perhaps be "Non-flush-resource-recovery public toilet systems in India" But in the end, I am just happy to hear about any system that is not polluting water bodies.

About my NGO "Non-Water Sanitation". Yes, we are mainly based in Germany, but have a team in India on the ground. We are mainly doing projects in the rural areas of Maharashtra with building UDDTs and doing WASH training. We are now active in Pune for 6 years and established a good reputation and exposure. This led to the contact to the city and to the university as well. The projects are funded by theses institutes and we just jump in as consultants. (Although there is a lot of free-work involved on our side). General funding for the organization is project based, a lot of voluntary work, and a few private donations.

Currently I am designing a system that separates the urine + analcleansing water from the solid matter inside the toilet through a filter. The liquids then get evaporated by solar energy and the overflow will first run into sand-filter and into a plant-based soak pit. I will keep you updated with the system, I am still into the details.

David and I did not have email contact so far. A dedicated thread for Sanitation First is a good idea. *

Re: Ecological Public Toilets for India? Is it possible?

Here is the material about the Musiri Community UDDT Toilet Center received from M. Subburaman, Director of SCOPE (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;
www.scopetrichy.com
). SCOPE built the center with support from WASTE, Netherlands in 2005/2006.

See the attached project description and illustrations. (in two messages)

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Re: Forum post

The ECOSAN Community Compost Toilet (ECCT) in Musiri Town Panchayat is functioning very well. MSTP is maintaining the toilet. 350 users are using the toilet. Many people visited the toilet to know the advantages of the toilet. Recently Ashock Layland officials and the Village leaders are visited the toilet and open the chamber. They appreciated the compost taken my their hands. After one hour spend in the toilet to understand the usage and they interview with the users. Finally they decided to construct the ECOSAN toilet in the house holds and the school in Thiruvallur District through CSR funds. The urine is using for Agriculture purpose. They visited the Horticulture research field at Resource Recovery Park in Musiri.?

Re: Ecological Public Toilets for India? Is it possible?

thanks for posting the photos. It looks interesting and is it good to see the amount of compost you gathered.

I have a few questions on this:

What is the incinerator for?

What are the costs for the construction?

How do you store the urine? And how is the process to get it to the farmers?

On the photos it looks like that the compost from a few chambers has more ash inside than others, which have a darker color. Is that just a misperception from the photos or can you explain the difference? I assume that different social groups, use different toilets, is that correct?

Comment by moderator: Content of the attachment is copied below (but to see the pictures, you need to open the attachment):

1. What is the incinerator for?

The photographs show the sanitary napkin incinerator installed in the toilet complex. In the absence of a sanitary napkin incinerator many women toilet users put their used napkins inside the compost chamber. This is very bad practice since, when we take out the compost positions of the napkins may be in the compost chamber. So we have installed a sanitary napkin incinerator which will be used by women to dispose of their used napkins. This will prevent any inhibition on the part of farmers or others taking out the compost for reuse.

2. What are the costs for the construction?

Two models of SNI are available. 1. Prefabricated working on electricity. 2. Manually constructed incinerator with bricks where the used napkins are burnt.
The cost of the electrically operated incinerator ranges from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 45000 depending on the number of users.

• The cost of a manually constructed incinerator will be about Rs. 5000 to Rs. 20,000
During our experience we have found that electrically operated SNIs is not used properly by the clients the SNI develops electrical drouble it becomes un usable. But the manually operated SNIs are very simple to operate and long lastic.

3. How do you store the urine? And how is the process to get it to the farmers?

• Individual ECOSAN toilet
Urine from the UDDTs, is collected in jerricans and brought by vehicle to the Urine Bank in the farm. Apart from promoting direct use of urine in agriculture, urine collected will also be converted into struvite and packed into packets or bags. They where applied for experimental basis for paddy and horticultural products with very good results.
• The urine from the ECOSAN community toilet is collected in a air type sump. The same is transported to the farm in the vehicle.

4. On the photos it looks like that the compost from a few chambers has more ash inside than others, which have a darker color. Is that just a misperception from the photos or can you explain the difference? I assume that a different social group, use different toilets, is that correct?

- With regard to the above question it is misperception from the photographs due to light difference.
- The compost after a few months will change is color to black.
- Irrespective of the social divisions all users use the toilet which is available there is no caste distinction inside the toilet complex

5. What do these cards hold up by the children mean?

To promote usage of ecosan toilets and to make the people understand the benefit of urine and compost from feaces a card was given to all user families. The cards mentioned the dates and as soon as the user entered in the toilet complex a sort of usage was marked in the Colum provided. At the end of the month the card holder was given a small amount for using the toilet. The principle was that he had contributed his urine and feaces to the toilet. This urine and the feacal based compost was precious for use in farms. Hence, a reward was given to him for having promoted ECOSAN toilet. All the children in the photographs are showing their ECOSAN toilet usage cards.( Give shit and get money)

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